Paul Fenwick

Biography

Paul Fenwick is the managing director of Perl Training Australia, and has been teaching computer science for over a decade. He is an internationally acclaimed presenter at conferences and user-groups worldwide, where he is well-known for his humour and off-beat topics. Paul is the author of Perl’s autodie pragma.

In his spare time, Paul’s interests include security, mycology, cycling, coffee, scuba diving, dressing like a pirate, and lexically scoped user pragmata.

Open Source Bridge 2016

Proposals for this user

An autonomous car is driving down a single-lane road carved out of a cliff. Unexpectedly, a child runs in front the car chasing a ball, and trips. The car cannot stop in time to avoid a fatal collision, but it can sacrifice itself and its passenger by driving off the cliff.
Should it? And if so, would you buy such a car?

Open Source Bridge 2014

Sessions for this user

Online services like "If This Then That" (IFTTT) are great for automating your life. However they provide limited ways for the end-user to add their own services, and often require credentials that one may normally wish to keep secret. The 'exobrain' project allows for service integration and extension on a machine *you* control.

There are lots of people doing good work in the world, and while there seems to be a myriad of ways to provide financial "donations", few of them provide a way to do so in a sustainable manner. We're going to look at Gittip, a freedom loving platform to provide a sustainable, predictable income to those making the world a better place.

Open Source Bridge 2013

Sessions for this user

As technical professionals we excel at understanding protocols, standards, file-formats, and APIs. Whenever there is a doubt as to the correct way to do things, one merely needs to read the fine manual or source code.
Unfortunately the reference manual for humans was lost a long time ago, and the source code is poorly documented. We've been struggling with inter-human communication ever since.
Paul Fenwick will present his findings at reverse-engineering the human communication protocol.

The Perl Renaissance is in full swing. Join internationally acclaimed speaker and White Camel Award winner Paul Fenwick as we explore some of the most freakin' amazing developments in the land of Perl!

Proposals for this user

Have you been at a talk which sounded great on paper, but was lackluster in delivery? Have you discovered that some presenters can seem to make *anything* interesting? Do you want to know how to hack audiences to convince them that your talk is *freakin' amazing* even though it's content-challenged? Want to use your conference presentation skills to kickstart your career in world domination?
BYO tinfoil hat.

Open Source Bridge 2011

Sessions for this user

Your brain is really good at surviving in neolithic Africa, but not because of our powers of higher levels of thought; they're much too slow. Humans are so successful as a species because we're champions at automating things, including our own thoughts and behaviours.
What's fascinating is that we're profoundly unaware of just how much our own lives run on automatic, and just how much our own behaviour is influenced by external factors. Join internationally acclaimed speaker Paul Fenwick as we examine the fascinating world of the human mind.

Proposals for this user

Awesome things have been happening in Perl recently; so many that even if you've been paying close attention, you may have missed a few. In this talk we'll examine some of the coolest recent technologies for Perl programmers.